03 Apr It’s All in the Details
Tony: “Dan, is Barney having you topo the whole office?”
Dan: “Yeah, I told him it wasn’t level and he needed to reconstruct the whole thing.”
Topographically surveying the entire Sidney office to ensure it’s perfectly level isn’t a stretch for a details person like Brian “Barney” Barhorst. In fact, Barney has a to-scale AutoCAD drawing of both offices, complete with desk assignments, filing cabinets, and, of course, Canteen snack storage*. (Yet we’d be darned if those drawings don’t come in handy when we want to rearrange furniture or provide a “map” for new hires.)
AutoCAD isn’t the only software we’ve uncommonly employed. Our traffic engineers daydream of laying out the traffic counting tubes indoors to transfer interoffice “traffic counts” into Synchro software*. Then we could predict when Jeff Puthoff is coming to harass the Michigan fans (oh wait, the clunky cowboy boots give that away) and analyze the optimal times to find an open restroom by avoiding peak hours (like after Tony’s long meetings).
Like a lot of engineers, we use fancy MS Excel spreadsheets for the NCAA pool* and the large format printer to display embarrassing photos on birthdays*, but we like to imagine that our particular use of engineering technology borders on engineering creativity. (Yes, we just used “creativity” and “engineering” in the same sentence.) And if that means Ryan Lefeld can use HEC-RAS software to calculate the forecasted Lake Erie water temperature for Ty Thobe’s upcoming bachelor party to Put-in-Bay, we’re all for it.
*Not an exaggeration.